Friday, June 24, 2011

915. What is there to be said about this comic that hasn't already been said about Ladybird Taint? It's an uninteresting stab at people who call themselves connoisseurs which makes an assertion then backs it up with a hypothetical scenario, trying to derive humor from "lolrandom." (Apparently before the comic went up, he even said in the #xkcd IRC channel that the comic would be late, but as a plus side it included the phrase "canadian surrealist porn.") Next?

916. I forgot that when I say "next?" in the context of XKCD it brings me to another fucking comic. can I take it back? In this one, Randy has discovered security through obscurity and is presenting it as a unique insight he had to protect your valuables--but, in a classic Randallian twist, it only works against geeks!!!

Really, Randy? This is your comic? 'If you have a really hard-to-break safe, people will assume that's where you keep your valuables!' Did you just have someone break into your house and steal your jokes? Is that what happened here? Are you trying to GOOMH geeks into saying "I do this too, but geekier?" (Seriously, check out the forums on this one, it has all sorts of fanboys describing their home security systems. And one nerd lecturing them for how their security system is now compromised.) Or did you really just discover the concept of misleading home security?

There is a quote:"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem. They know how it's done. They see it done every day of their lives. Yet they are unable to do it themselves." You, my friend, are a eunuch. So you don't like xkcd, okay. You're entitled to dedicate your life to a blog about how crappy it is. But here's the deal: You're being a child. We're all very impressed how you set up a website to cry about how you don't like another guy's website. And then, in lieu of, say, actually doing something with your life, like writing a book or teaching people or doing YOUR OWN THING, your one claim to fame is your greatest enemy. You do realize that YOU HAVE XKCD TO THANK for your popularity. So go ahead and trash it all you want, but know that if your world mission ever succeeds, xkcd's webtraffic comes crashing down and nobody ever listens to what Randall Monroe dares to believe is funny, you will be left crying to yourself that you now have nobody else to whine about all day long. At that point, you will find something else to complain about all day long to the internet. But, only as a last resort, will you create something of your own. Parasitism is just so much easier.

Similar mother, similar father, similar dog, cat and fishAnd we'll make the same wishWhen the birthday candles litWe'll both be olderWe won't get our wishYes, I think that I'm falling in love with myself again

Yes, I think I'm falling in love with myself againYes, I think I'm fallingYes, I think I'm fallingYes, I think I'm falling in love with myself again

With her hand in my hand and my hand in hersDon't we look a blurMe and her and me and herHey, kiss her, oh kiss herOur friends do concurYes, I think that I'm falling in love with myself again

(Chorus)

I can't see with you in front of the mirror staring, staringI can't hear myself think with all that music blaring, blaring

"Rob, I don't read it as "hard-to-break safe", I read it as "unopenable by anyone, including the owner". Just sayin "

(a) that is entirely irrelevant (b) there are ways to open safes with broken locks. in order for it to be truly unopenable it would need to have no inside, so that there would be no way to open it topologically.

@6:00 Anything 3-dimensional with a 4th dimension added becomes hyper-anything. Hypertoroidal would almost certainly mean toroidal with 4 or more dimensions. It is absolutely not to be confused with hyperthyroidism, which Rob certainly does not have.

Well, 915 is probably the last XKCD comic I'll ever bother reading. Why? Because the previous 400 comics may have entertained me five times? Certainly a factor, but no.

Randall has certainly provided us with vast evidence that he knows nothing about art or the arts over the years, and this piss-poor attempt at applying the science of psychology to his limited worldview is consistently indicting.

Pause for a moment and wonder 'what is art? How can one know which forms are superior or inferior?' Randall for one has no idea. He cannot seem to tell the difference. And apparently neither should we, a position I can understand considering how much criticism his stick figures generate. But we live in a place called Reality where not all things are equal.

DaVinci has more talent and technical skill than we'll ever see from the Void People, for example. Not that we should expect anybody to perform at that level for a webcomic, but the point is made: art has varying levels of quality. Randall cannot tell the difference, though. Good for him. If wine so bitter it requires honey and ginger to sweeten it tastes the same to him as any other, I say leave him be.

But he cannot possibly assert that all literature is equal, that Homer's Iliad is no better than 'Bitch Got a Penis', that the creation of a sloppy joe is no less of an achievement than making fine wine or that his comics are anywhere near as funny and artistic as Calvin and Hobbes.

Perhaps in the world of Randall, anyone who can tell the difference is just a pretentious snob, but he might be missing the point: stop churning out crap and maybe we'll like it more.

915 is Randall being relativistic about relativism. He wants to have his cake and eat it too. Unfortunately, he's such a hack that both his relativism and opportunistic anti-relativism rear their heads.

Yeah the 90s pretty much sucked. The 80s were way better. Granted, I'm too young to remember most of the 80s, but that decade sure produced some awesome music and movies, so I have to assume that it was awesome.

The 90s was the decade where everybody fondly remembered the 80s while simultaneously destroying all records of all the shitty things in it. It will mainly be remembered by recordings of well-adjusted adults who have to talk about the Internet without understanding what it is.

The 00s was the decade where everybody fondly remembered the 80s. It will be remembered primarily for George W. Bush malapropisms, both real and invented.

The 10s seem to bring nostalgia for either the 80s and the 90s, depending on how stupid you are. I will decline to tell you which option is more stupid.

I think you're all missing the joke in the safe comic. The point is that geeks are irresistibly drawn to solving any puzzle they find, including fancy security systems. The safe could even have a sign on it saying "valuables are here -->", and the geeks would still try to pick the lock.

Once they've managed to somehow open it, they would be distracted from the fact that there's nothing valuable inside by the Rubik's cube.

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

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